


Out of Order Hallelujahs

by fleete



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Holidays, Kissing, Pre-Relationship, Religious Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-02 06:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleete/pseuds/fleete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'll take Crane, Abbie decides.  He'll probably spend the whole time talking about how 18th century music is better than modern music, how he knew Handel personally, how he can sing the The Hallelujah Chorus backwards in Old English.  He'll distract her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of Order Hallelujahs

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was [podficced by the incomparable analise010](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1063684) for the Sleepy Hollow Fanwork Exchange 2013. Go listen right now! It has musics and everything!

What with demons, death, and the impending apocalypse, Abbie had forgotten all about it until the tickets show up in her inbox.

The subject line reads, “Your Tickets Are Ready: Handel's Messiah, Carnegie Hall, December 18, 2013...”

She grimaces at the email for ten seconds before skipping over it and reading the rest of her inbox.

Abbie ends up letting the email sit there for another four days before she steels herself and opens it. A bare-bones text email pops open, and she selects “Load Images" at the top of the page. Decadent red-and-white holiday graphics unfurl down her window. The tickets stare up at her, all three hundred dollars of them, and Abbie has to swallow down a sudden wash of emotion.

She should just go. She should stop moping and whining and thinking about it, and just go, like the grown-ass woman she is.

She’ll take Crane, Abbie decides. He'll probably spend the whole time talking about how 18th century music is better than modern music, how he knew Handel personally, how he can sing the The Hallelujah Chorus backwards in Old English. He'll distract her.

Decision made, Abbie grits her teeth, prints the tickets, and stuffs them in her bag where she can't see them.

*

“So," Abbie says. Crane is picking at his pad thai with a skeptical moue. "I have these tickets. To a thing. A concert. Do you want to come?"

"Certainly," he says. He manages to get a noodle wrapped around the tines of his fork, but it slips away as soon as he gets it to his lips. "What sort of concert?"

"Handel's Messiah. Do you--"

"Really?" He looks inordinately pleased, and Abbie can't help but smile, her anxiety temporarily forgotten. "Are the works of Handel still performed?"

"They are. You've heard his stuff before?"

"Yes! That is..." He sets his fork down. "I've never heard the entire oratorio at once. I wasn't one for music, as a child. I heard several arias from Messiah at mass, but I fear I did not pay attention as I should."

Abbie imagines a precocious, snot-nosed Ichabod Crane, squirming in a church pew, and can’t help but grin.

"But to hear _real_ music once more, instead of through your little boxes..." He flaps a hand at her phone, and then pauses, apparently overcome by her generosity. "Thank you, Miss Mills."

Abbie’s smile falters, and she winces despite herself. "I already had the tickets. But you're welcome."

 

*

“Am I dressed appropriately?”

Abbie looks him up and down.

He’s donned the new pants he bought, and God bless whatever kindly salesperson helped him pick them out, because they fit…nice. Fitted. Abbie bites back a smile.

“Very modern,” she tells him.

“Mmm.” He frowns down at his new pants. “I’m not sure I like the fashion. But I did not want to embarrass you by looking out of place.”

He’s wearing his usual shirt, jacket, and shoes. Abbie laughs softly. Ichabod smiles, proud of his own joke.

“You also look…very modern,” he says, waving a hand at her dress. He takes in the basic black dress she’d pulled from the back of her closet, his gaze flickering quickly back up from where the hem falls just an inch above her knees.

Crane likes to pretend that he's not at all bothered by modern dress, but she has occasionally caught him glancing guiltily at women's calves. Abbie’s not going to lie, it's at least 20% of why she picked this dress. She wanted to see him blush at the sight of her legs.

As in most things, Crane obliges her.

*

Abbie decides to drive instead of taking the train. She’s not in the mood for companionable silence today, because that would mean that she’s alone with her own thoughts. So she quizzes Ichabod about his early life: food and holidays and other aspects of life in the 18th century.

“Were you very religious? Before?”

Ichabod sets his jaw at the edge of her vision. “I was…lapsed, you might say. I never felt the ecstasy of faith that some do. I was more apt to read during the daily chapel at Oxford than to pray.”

"I like this side of you," Abbie teases him. "The kid who can't sit still for concerts and church."

He smiles. “Yes. I confess I did not pray on a regular basis until I saw my first battle.”

“Yeah.” So much for distracting conversation.

Another mile rushes by in thoughtful silence.

Crane sucks in a sudden breath. “Although,” he ventures. “Recent events have lead me to consider whether I ought to be more observant.”

Abbie has given some thought to that, too, although she’s not quite gotten around to showing up at Sleepy Hollow First Baptist. “You were Church of England?” she asks.

He nods. “But Katrina professed to be a Quaker, and so she and I were married in a Quaker church."

“Is that a lot different?”

“Very. Or at least--” He smiles a self-deprecating smile. “--it seemed so at the time. Now…”

They lapse into thought again. "You said she _professed_ to be a Quaker. Do you think she lied?"

He shakes his head. "No. Nothing so simple as a lie. But she was always...strange about her faith. I wonder now whether her witch coven did not have their own brand of religion."

“Ah.”

They drift on for a few miles, and Abbie gratefully spots something else to talk about.

“You see those shapes in the distance?” she asks, pointing over the steering wheel.

“Yes.”

“That's New York City.”

Crane take this in, squinting. “...you mean those things are buildings.”

“Yes.”

His awe is so great, he only emits a faint, “Heavens,” before going speechless for a full ten minutes. Meanwhile, the buildings get higher and higher on the horizon, and eventually, Crane bursts into questions. The traffic worries him (“Are there measures to prevent collisions?”), the skyscrapers awe him (“But how are they constructed?”), and through it all, the niggling ache in her gut grows and grows.

*

She uses the GPS to find a parking garage. Crane's too busy looking out the window. They manage to get all the way to the sidewalk outside Carnegie Hall, and Abbie finds herself pausing, not quite ready to go in.

“Our destination, I presume?” Crane's left behind his speechless awe and moved on to excitement. He's on the verge of bouncing on this heels, Abbie can tell. “Interesting architecture. Shall we?” He tucks a hand behind his back and extends the other in that old-timey way of his.

She suppresses a smile and winds a hand around his elbow, pulling it down to his side. “You see those two over there?” she says, nodding at a expensively dressed woman with her hand wrapped around a man's bicep, just above his bent elbow. “Like that.”

Crane makes a skeptical face. “Is that the fashion, then?” They start up the steps.

Abbie shrugs. “It's a holdover. We'll pretend to be cultured people tonight.” The last sentence just slips out, unbidden, and it makes her go tense all over.

Crane, thankfully, does not notice. “It seems rather intimate.” He looks down his nose at her hand, at the way they're tucked up against one another.

She quirks an eyebrow at him and shuffles back a step. “Does it make you uncomfortable?”

“No.” And then he tugs her back in, and lifts his head, looks straight ahead, stiff-backed. It reminds Abbie strongly of his reaction to naked knees, and it's pretty adorable.

“You're a very adaptable guy,” she says, and the compliment seems to please him.

*

The tickets are excellent, in the first tier that forms a U around the auditorium. Crane is in his element, clearly enjoying being in an environment that he understands, though he huffs a muted laugh when the standard announcement about recording devices is made. And then it starts.

Abbie doesn't actually like opera. But Sheriff Corbin had. The two of them saw Messiah every December for five years running: every year Abbie had worked at the department. “Let's pretend to be cultured people tonight,” he'd say. And they'd wear a suit and dress, drive down to the City, and sit in the first tier (Corbin liked to spring for the better seats), and they would sit and stand as the music dictated. It was their thing. Corbin liked to whisper comments about the conductor's musical decisions, the relative authenticity of the performance, and even the content of the performance. He always complained that it was out of order; conductors often placed “Hallelujah” at the end of the piece to guarantee a standing ovation, and Corbin scoffed every time. They had been shushed by ushers more than once.

The performance rolls on, nearing the end of Part 1, and the sopranos launches into “His yoke is easy, and his burthen in light,” a section that the Sheriff had always found hilarious, in his dorky way, both because he didn't agree with sentiment, but also because the sopranos sing “easy” in this funny, wiggly way ( _coloratura_ , she can hear the Sheriff correct her) that is supposed to convince everybody of how easy it is, to carry this burden.

The song doesn't sound right, without the Corbin huffing soft, ironic laughter beside her. She strains for the joke, but it's not there. Her chair feels uncomfortable, Crane sits with excellent posture and alertness next to her, and she hates it. She hates this goddamn song.

Her burden is neither easy nor light, and she laughs, finally, at her own bitterness. Corbin would have been disappointed in her.

Applause swells around her as orchestra falls silent for the intermission.

Crane sighs happily beside her. “A talented group, are they not? I quite liked the contralto.”

“I need a drink.” She stands quickly and steps over Crane’s feet. She hurries out onto the mezzanine, thankful for the feeling of her limbs moving, of a goal, even if it’s just to get in line at the tiny bar.

“Miss Mills— oh pardon me, madam.”

Abbie looks back to see that Crane had followed her only to run over a tiny old woman with jewels dripping from her ears and throat. She smacks Crane’s chest with her program.

“My sincerest apologies,” he tries to say while still inching past her, but that only seems to annoy the lady more. Crane receives another hit on the arm as he scurries past her and joins Abbie in line at the bar.

“Smooth,” Abbie says, but Crane doesn’t take the bait.

“Are you all right?”

“I just want a drink.” The person in front of her moves out of the way, and Abbie nods at the bartender. “Hi. Gin and tonic.”  
“Allow me,” Ichabod says, and takes out a wallet Abbie’s never seen before. She opens her mouth to protest, but Ichabod continues: “You were kind enough to provide our tickets and transportation, after all.” She watches bemusedly as Ichabod pays for her drink, nose wrinkling briefly at the cost.

“I didn’t buy the tickets,” Abbie says when she finally has a drink in her hand. The first sip goes straight to her head in a soothing rush.

“No?”

“Sheriff Corbin bought them, months ago. It was kind of a tradition of ours.”

The mezzanine crowds with people rushing to get a drink or find a restroom, and Abbie slips into a nearby stairwell to avoid the rush. Crane follows her, and when the door swings shuts behind him, the noise level lowers to a blessed minimum.

Abbie sighs in relief.

Crane looks down at her bemusedly. “Forgive me, but you do not seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“I’m—.” Abbie shakes her head. “I don’t know. It was a tradition. Five years in a row, we came here. It just feels…different now. God, even the music is getting on my nerves.”

Crane quirks the side of his mouth. “Mine too.”

“I thought you liked the contralto,” Abbie says.

“As I said, I am not musical. Is the contralto the low voice or the high one? I haven’t the faintest.”

That makes her laugh. She can tell he’s lying, but he’s smiling his pleased smile again, happy that he could make her laugh.

She shakes her head. “I am just…I’m in a funk. I can’t even enjoy a stupid concert without—“

She runs out of words. Ugh. Abbie’s tired. She’s tired of this concert and of her own bad mood.

Abbie’s not sure why she does it. Crane’s hunched a little bit, trying to stay out of the way of the doors that occasionally swing open next to them, and smiling down at her sympathetically.

She goes up on her toes and kisses him on the lips. Crane sucks in a breath of surprise, creating a brief suck at her lips, and then they’re parting. Crane turns his head away, and Abbie drops down into her heels, forehead brushing Crane’s chest as she looks at their feet.

“Abbie. I. Miss Mills—”

 _Married man_ , her brain helpfully yells at her. _He’s a married man, you homewrecking jerk._

“Sorry,” she says, taking a step back. “I’m sorry. I forgot that you—” and the lie comes tumbling out without much thought on her part, “We— we do that now, people kiss each other sometimes, but I forgot that you’re from…”

She looks up at him, and Crane looks baffled, his color high. “Acquaintances kiss each other on the mouth?” His voice is a little high, and his eyes drop to her lips. Abbie has to suppress a shiver.

“No. Not acquaintances. Usually just…family members.” She shakes herself, looks away. She’s a terrible liar. “I apologize.”

They both spend some time staring at their shoes. Bell tones sound, signalling that it’s time to return to the auditorium. Crane clears his throat. “No apology necessary. I…I obviously still have much to learn about modern ways.”  
She can’t tell whether he believes her or not.

“We should go in,” she says, but Crane catches her arm when she reaches for the door.

“I also consider you family.” He says it so earnestly, eyes searching her face for her reaction, that she ends up smiling at him. When she can’t think of anything to say, he offers her his elbow. “Shall we?”

Abbie nods.

*

When the Hallelujah Chorus starts up at the end of part two, exactly when it’s supposed to, Abbie is pleasantly surprised. Everyone stands with a dutiful creak of chairs that can be heard even over the choir.

“It’s in order!” she whispers.

“Hmm?”

“It’s--” Crane’s face is close to hers, and Abbie leans back out of his space. “Nothing.”

But he keeps looking at her, even as the choir launches into the final _forever and ever and ever_ , and Abbie smiles at him, grateful that she’s not standing here by herself.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Out of Order Hallelujahs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063684) by [Readbyanalise010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readbyanalise010/pseuds/Readbyanalise010)




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